A New Season

It's almost autumn, when work traditionally speeds up on the obits desk after a quiet summer. Except the quiet summer never happened -- we've been stretched to the hilt since May.

Unlike a lot of major metropolitan newspapers, we write about the regular people of the region as well as the world-renown. We publish, on average, 300 news obits a month at the Post, but the number has been increasing. I kept a little spreadsheet on the topic for awhile -- but things got so busy this summer that I haven't updated it since mid-July. As soon as the phones quiet down, I need to knock out some "advancers" of those world-renown figures so that when they do go, we're ready for them.